


Well, Better Than The Alternative

by kaijuvenom



Category: Space Force (TV)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Chan should've just gotten a kitten, F. Tony had OCD, Horror AU ???, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, Science Experiments, Tardigrades, Why Did I Write This?, and im always like 'ah u guys are just saying that for attention', because i am projecting, but like not a ton, but really truly from the bottom of my heart i am asking, has no one else ever written about tardigrades before, is this what i've done??, or 'why did i write this', sci-fi au??, sci-fi horror au, sometimes i see people in ao3 tags saying things like 'what did i just write', welp ig i get an award for that, why dont u get a kitten and maybe youll calm down
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:06:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27637945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaijuvenom/pseuds/kaijuvenom
Summary: Tony is the lab assistant of Chan Kaifang, an astrobotanist who turns out to be alittlebit more than that. In fact, a lot more. And Tony is starting to wish he'd never gotten a crush on him in the first place, because he really is starting to get in over his head.
Relationships: Chan Kaifang/F. Tony Scarapiducci
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	Well, Better Than The Alternative

Tony had always liked being a lab assistant. The job was easy, the hours flexible, and Doctor Chan didn’t care if he brought his phone in the lab or listened to music on a bluetooth speaker. In fact, he rarely ever saw Doctor Chan. He came in during odd hours, staying in his private lab in the back that even Tony didn’t have the keys to, and was, for lack of any better descriptors, mysterious. 

For a while, it had been his personal goal to figure out exactly what Chan was doing back there, but after a few months trying to sneak in, look over his shoulder before the door swung shut behind him, and snoop through notebooks he left out, Tony gave up. 

As far as Chan’s academic articles went (at least, the bits Tony could read), he was an astrobotanist who often did research for NASA. His latest paper had been on growing tulips on Mars. Why tulips, Tony had no clue, but the thing that interested him about that was the fact that he’d seen those tulips, being grown in synthesized Martian soil. They hadn’t been behind the locked door. Which begged the question, what the hell was he doing back there? 

He was playing a game on his phone to pass the time while he waited for the delivery of mycelium Chan had been expecting for the past week. What on Earth Doctor Chan needed with such insane amounts of mycelium, Tony didn’t think he’d ever know. It was just another one of life’s great mysteries, he supposed. 

Doctor Chan, unfortunately, arrived before the mycelium delivery. Not that Chan would be mad it wasn’t here yet, Tony had just wanted a reason to impress him by having everything he needed ready before he came into work. 

“Good  _ morning,  _ Doctor Chan!” He said brightly, hopping off the stool he’d been sitting on to bounce over to Chan. 

“Tony,” Chan nodded, briefly glancing at him before moving to a small pod sitting innocently on the lab table, containing a brightly colored plant Tony had been told never to touch. “I’m assuming the mycelium isn’t here yet.”

“No,” Tony confirmed, moving into his usual routine and hovering behind Chan as he moved about the lab, watering plants and collecting small samples from their pollen, stems, leaves, and/or soil for later examination. “Expecting it in less than half an hour, though.”

Chan hummed in response, moving to a microscope with one of his soil samples and using tweezers Tony handed him to place a few small clumps of dirt onto the slide. This was the only time Tony ever really saw Chan, when he performed his daily routine of examining his plants that took roughly an hour, before he vanished into his back room. 

Tony prepared the rest of the slides for Chan in advance before opening up a storage cabinet to look for the cleaning solution. “So…” he said as he passed across the various lab tables, wiping up any dirt that had spilled and cleaning off the blades of the clippers Chan had used, “how are you?” He tried for small talk every day, but Chan rarely added to the conversation, too lost in his own little plant world. 

“The sporotrichosis on this moss is increasing at a rate I didn’t expect,” Chan said, apparently under the impression that had been an appropriate answer to Tony’s question.

“Good for the moss,” Tony said, “or bad for the moss. I’m not sure if that’s what you wanted or not.”

Chan glanced up at him and their eyes met for a second--Tony hadn’t realized he’d been staring at him until right then and he quickly looked away. “I’ve been growing this moss for the past twenty days, trying to keep the sporotrichosis growth at a constant rate, and something seems to have triggered its multiplication rate.” 

Tony held up his hands defensively. “Don’t look at me, I touch nothing you don’t want me to.” 

He shook his head, looking away from Tony and back to the sealed container of moss. “I wasn’t blaming you. It’s just odd.” He shrugged, moving the container away. “It’s not important, anyway. It’s just a side experiment.”

“Are all these side experiments?” Tony asked cautiously, knowing how hesitant Chan always was to talk about his work.

“Most,” he said. “A few are for papers, the succulent with hair is for a private company. They want to market it as a low maintenance pet.”

Tony wrinkled his nose, recoiling from the bizarrely fluffy plant Chan held up to him. He’d never liked that one. “That's horrifying,” he said matter-of-factly. 

Chan shrugged, setting the plant down and petting its hairy leaf. “It’s a paycheck.”

There was a knock on the lab door, making them both jump. 

“Oh!” Tony realized belatedly. “That’ll be the mycelium.” He rushed over to open the door to the delivery person, who was holding a form in one hand while the other held the handle of a dolly that had four crates stacked on top of each other resting on it. 

“Uh, F. Tony?” They asked, squinting at the name. “Scara…”

Tony grabbed the form from them and signed the bottom, shoving it back into their hands and taking the handle of the dolly before they had time to butcher his name any further. “That’s me,” he said with a trademark wink before shutting the door in their face. He hadn’t meant to be rude, he just knew how Chan felt about having other people in his lab for longer than was necessary. 

Tony wheeled the dolly around to Chan. “Where do you want this?” He asked.

“You can leave it there, that’s fine,” Chan said vaguely. He took a step forward towards the crates and began carefully opening the top one. The mycelium was packed carefully, meant to keep it alive and healthy for whatever it was Chan had planned for it. 

“What do you need all that for?” Tony asked. He didn’t think he’d ever seen such an enormous amount of mushroom spores in just one container.

“I’m raising tardigrades,” Chan said, and Tony blinked, not expecting to have gotten an answer, and definitely not expecting to get  _ that  _ answer.

“Christ, how many do you have?” Tony asked, laughing at that. He may not know much, but he was fairly certain tardigrades were microscopic. 

“Just one. My experiment involves increasing its size. It’s nearly three feet long now,” Chan answered, apparently not sensing Tony’s confusion at that. “I had two, but they didn’t like each other.”

Tony blinked. Another answer he hadn’t been expecting. “You’re fucking with me, right? Tell me you’re fucking with me.”

Chan looked up at him, and a smile grew on his face. “I’m fucking with you,” he confirmed, and Tony breathed a sigh of relief. 

“Thank G-d,” Tony muttered, rolling his eyes. “Remember me to never let me ask you what you do back there again. I think I prefer the mystery.”

“I’ll put it on my planner,” Chan said, carefully setting the mycelium back in its crate. “You can leave now, I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than hang out here all day. I won’t need you for the rest of my shift.” 

Tony was used to that sort of tone. It was the one Chan used that meant  _ I’m about to go in my spooky secret lab and work on my spooky secret mushroom experiments and would prefer if you didn’t stay here the whole time. _

“I don’t want to skip out on work,” Tony said, as he always did, making a halfhearted attempt at an argument that Chan would never submit to.

As he expected, Chan shrugged as he grabbed the handle of the dolly and pulled it over to his private lab. “I don’t pay your salary.”

Like always, it was a fair point, and with one long, rather sad look towards that ever-tempting locked door, Tony grinned and waved goodbye. “See ya in a few hours, then. If you need me.”

“I’ll text you and let you know,” Chan waved goodbye, and the fact that he waved (which was a normal human thing to do) shouldn’t have made Tony’s heart speed up the way it had. 

Chan wasn’t  _ technically  _ Tony’s boss. They worked for the company that owned the entire building, that company paid both their salaries, and yes, technically, Chan had authority over Tony in that he could ask him to clean something and he would, because that was his  _ job,  _ but Tony didn’t rely on Chan for anything. He didn’t report to Chan when he clocked in, or go to him when he wanted a vacation day. Which he never wanted anyway, because while he got paid for eight hours of work every day, it seemed the longest he ever stayed was about an hour at a time. But that was irrelevant. 

Tony usually rode his bike to work, which he regretted as soon as he stepped outside the building. It had started raining at some point, and not a normal rain either, a fucking giant, tits out, lightning-and-thunder-storm. Because why not, he figured. The sky had been sunny and bright when he’d come in this morning, but fine, whatever. He’d walk to the coffee shop a block away without an umbrella and stay there until Chan needed him. There was no way he was getting anywhere on his bike with the streets flooded the way they were. 

The coffee shop was hardly a walk under normal circumstances, but these were not normal circumstances. Tony didn’t know when the last time it had rained like this was. Or if it ever had, to be honest. He chose to blame global warming.

By the time he got inside, he was soaking wet. His hair and clothes dripped water on the floor as he attempted to dry himself off on the mat in front of the door. The effort was futile, but it seemed to be appreciated by the barista, who gave him a sympathetic smile as she greeted him.

“Hey Tony,” she waved. “Same as usual?” 

“Yeah,” Tony nodded, shivering as he stepped away from the door and held out his debit card. “Thanks, Erin.”

“No problem Another long day at work, huh?” She asked sarcastically. 

Tony grinned, stepping out of the queue and towards the side of the counter to wait for his drink. “I keep telling you, it’s a great job.”

“Yeah, but aren’t you like, worried one of his experiments will get loose and kill you? In movies, it’s  _ always  _ the lab assistant who dies first. Because they’re always the ones snooping around in shit they’re not supposed to be.” She looked at him pointedly as she added four shots of espresso to the cup of milk she’d steamed. 

“Hey, I’m done snooping,” Tony argued, raising his hands defensively. “My snooping days are long behind me.” Erin rolled her eyes, which was a fair reaction. She added vanilla flavoring to the drink and swirled it around before setting it in front of Tony, along with the canister of whipped cream. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to let customers get their own whipped cream, but Tony tended to complain if he didn’t get the  _ exact  _ amount he needed. Or, as Tony had said repeatedly, it wasn’t the  _ amount  _ of whipped cream that mattered so much as the number of times you pressed the nozzle. 

No matter how many times Tony explained the importance of pressing the nozzle and hearing the  _ whoosh  _ of whipped cream in increments of five, Erin still didn’t get it. She wasn’t rude about it, it was just another one of Tony’s compulsions, and she chose not to question it anymore, not wanting to embarrass him about it. 

She watched as Tony squeezed the nozzle one, two, three, four, five times before setting the canister back down. 

“Sure that’s enough?” She asked, and Tony seemed to consider it for a moment before he took the canister again.

One, two, three, four, five. 

“There. Thanks.” He gave her a smile as he picked up the cup and moved to sit down at his usual table in the corner. 

Erin wondered if there was a significance in the number, a reason Tony liked to do certain things in increments of five instead of, say, three, or eight. She’d never asked, she’d always thought it might seem rude. Not that Tony seemed to mind personal questions, she remembered the first time she’d asked him about the counting and he’d easily explained it, ‘it’s just an OCD thing’, he’d said, ‘I do certain things five times’. 

It didn’t bother Erin anymore, not since she knew he wasn’t just telling her to push the whipped cream nozzle one more time to be obnoxious. Not much Tony did bothered her, not nearly as much as it seemed to bother everyone else, including Erin’s dad, who owned the company Tony worked for. Her dad had tried to have him fired for completely mundane and non-fireable offenses at least six times now, and Tony kept coming back. It was almost impressive, really. Even Erin didn’t go that far to piss off her dad, and she was like, the CEO of pissing off her dad. 

Although Tony had other reasons for wanting to keep his job, she was sure. He’d been talking about asking Chan out for weeks now, and he still had yet to do it. Erin was beginning to doubt he ever would, but he still a giant crush. She might’ve called it cute if she wanted to really annoy Tony.

She watched him throughout the day, the way he barely moved from his seat in the corner, his empty coffee cup sitting next to him on the table as he scrolled through his phone. He occasionally glanced out the window and frowned when he saw it was still storming outside, as if it might’ve stopped if he glared at it long enough. 

Erin didn’t notice when he left, it seemed like one second he was sitting at the coffee table and the next second he was out the door without even a goodbye. That was unusual for him. Usually he at least gave her a wave or something. She frowned at his hastily retreating figure practically running out the door and into the rain.

********

After nearly a year of working with Chan, Tony had gotten used to how he texted. He was formal, didn’t use abbreviations for words and never used emojis. He always capitalized letters and used punctuation. 

Which was how he knew that when he got Chan’s text, something was terribly wrong.

He looked down at his phone again. Text bubbles indicating Chan was typing again had gone away. There was no new message after the first two Chan had sent. Like he’d stopped typing halfway through.

Or been stopped.

He tried not to think about that.

The three words separated into two messages Chan had typed out stared at him as he took the elevator up to the third-floor lab.

_ help me _

_ alone _

That was it. Three words, two messages, no capitalization, no punctuation. 

He didn’t know if the  _ alone  _ message was meant to be part of the first one, as in  _ help me alone, don’t call 9-1-1,  _ or  _ help me, I’m alone.  _ Either way, Tony made the executive decision not to call for backup.

Chan had been known to make fun of Tony in the past, be sarcastic, and occasionally even lightly prank him, but he couldn’t imagine Chan purposefully causing Tony  _ this  _ much anxiety for a joke. That would be cruel, and while Tony wouldn’t claim to know Chan extremely well, he felt confident in saying he wasn’t cruel. Usually, confirmation that Chan cared about him enough not to actively mean might make Tony happy, but in this situation, he was praying to G-d Chan was playing a cruel trick on him.

When he stepped off the elevator, he was shaking. The power flickered out for a second and he felt his heart stop. It was just the storm, it was fucking up the power grid. It had gone out a couple times in the coffee shop, too, only it hadn’t been terrifying then. He walked to the lab door and stopped in front of it. He could do this. He was  _ not  _ going to die. 

“I’m going to die,” he muttered to himself as he stared at the door, slowly pulling his keyring out to unlock it. 

It was stupid, really, that he was so concerned. Chan probably just spilled a chemical or contaminated something or another, the worst he’d get would be a little toxic gas inhalation or maybe a chemical burn. He unlocked the door and took a deep breath, taking one more glance at his phone to make sure Chan hadn’t messaged him anything else before putting it in his back pocket. 

The power flickered out as soon as he swung the door open. He stayed there in the doorway, squinting into the pitch-black lab, completely still. The backup generator hummed to life and a few lights flickered on again. Mostly just equipment, the heat lamps and temperature regulators for Chan’s experiments. It was still dark. If anything, it was worse because the sporadic low light cast shadows across the walls that made Tony jump about a foot in the air. The low hum of the machines set his teeth on edge. He didn't hear anything else.

Stepping inside, Tony made the (probably stupid) decision to shut and lock the lab door behind him, turning on his phone flashlight to make his way around the room. Nothing seemed out of place. Chan must be in his private lab. Tony shuffled towards it, hesitant to call out to him for fear of invoking some sort of Eldritch plant god. 

The door was unlocked. That was highly disturbing. It was never unlocked, not once in all the times Tony had been in this lab and snuck over to jiggle the doorknob had it been unlocked, and yet here it was now, unlocked and ready to be opened. Now, of course, the last thing Tony wanted to do was open it and look inside. 

He swallowed, trying to push down the fear. At worst, Chan had probably gotten hurt, maybe inhaled a poison or fallen and knocked into broken glass or--whatever was wrong, Tony wasn’t going to help him by being scared. 

He opened the door, inhaling slowly. The room wasn’t huge, roughly the size of a middle school classroom, with large shelves lining the walls and sitting sporadically throughout the room like halfhearted room dividers. There were a few tables, some file cabinets, and a desk shoved in the corner closest to Tony, covered in papers and books and various medical tools. One of the tables held an oversized glass container, rectangular in shape, something you might keep a reptile in, only much more high-tech. It didn’t look much different from the temperatur-controlled habitats Chan kept all his plants in, aside from it being much bigger, and… broken. It was broken. Tony took a few steps closer, examining it. The glass lid was completely shattered, most of it outside the container. There was nothing inside of it, so… something had broken out. There was something in the lab, something that had broken out of this habitat, and Tony had no idea what it was. Just as he was about to turn his phone back on and call  _ some  _ form of emergency services, his arm was grabbed.

The scream he let out would have been embarrassing in any other situation, but at this point he figured it was warranted. Before he was even fully aware of what was happening, Tony was being pulled into what he could only assume was a fairly large storage closet and the door was being slammed shut behind him. In his fear, he’d dropped his phone on the floor and heard the screen shatter, but the flashlight was still on, illuminating the vague outline of Doctor Chan, breathing heavily and holding his left hand against his chest like it was injured. 

He didn’t have time to ask the most pressing question on his mind at the moment--the question being  _ what the actual fuck?-- _ because as soon as he opened his mouth to speak, there was a loud, echoing  _ bang  _ against the door, making it shake on its hinges. He couldn’t breathe, he was shaking, right on the edge of a panic attack, listening to whatever the  _ fuck  _ it was outside that door move around. It almost sounded like an animal, but that couldn’t be right, Chan was a  _ botanist,  _ he rarely even used lab rats and mice. 

Which reminded him--

“What the  _ fuck?”  _ Tony asked, which he felt was a valid question. In fact, it was the only thought on his mind at the moment. 

Chan took a step forward, and Tony couldn’t help but look at his hand. He couldn’t see it, it was cradled in his other arm and wrapped in his coat, but there was blood. There was so much blood. It was soaking through his lab coat and running down his arm. 

_ “What the fuck,”  _ Tony repeated, this time a lot quieter and with a lot more emphasis. “What the fuck. What. The. Fuck.” He backed up into a cabinet that leaned up against the wall and slid down onto the floor. “What the fuck.”

“I need your help,” Chan said, and it was the first thing he’d said since Tony had been dragged into the storage closet. 

_ “Fuck  _ that,” he responded, nearly saying  _ fuck you  _ but deciding that was a bit too extreme for the moment. He should save that until he really needed it.

“No, Tony, listen,” Chan said, kneeling down in front of him. His mangled hand was right in Tony’s line of sight and he looked away quickly. “I need you to go out there, I need you to go out there, and get Tanner--get the Tardigrade back in her enclosure. There’s an extra one under the one she broke out of, it shouldn’t be that hard.”

Well, now seemed as good a time as any, Tony figured, as he stared at Chan incredulously.  _ “Fuck  _ you.” 

Chan blinked, as if he hadn’t expected that answer. Which was not Tony’s problem at all.

“She’s not vicious!” Chan seemed very adamant in his belief that the thing that had apparently bitten his hand off was perfectly safe. “I grew her myself, this experiment had been  _ years  _ in the making. She’s like- she’s like a pet. I named her.”

As if naming a horrifying creature grown in a lab was somehow better. Yet another string of  _ what the actual literal fuck,  _ was right on the tip of Tony’s tongue, but he held it back, taking a deep breath. “Tell me what the fuck happened. What the fuck is that thing,  _ why  _ is it out of its cage, and am I going to die here?”

Chan sighed, fully sitting down next to Tony, cringing in pain as he cradled his hand in his lap.

“I’ve been working on this project since grad school. I’ve always found Tardigrades fascinating, I had a way with plants, fungi are… well, I like them. So I started experimenting, and eventually I found a way to stimulate the growth of a Tardigrade by using certain types of mycelium. I… well, I stimulated it too much, and… now she’s roughly the size and weight of a german shephard. That was after she ate her sibling a few months ago.”

“So… all that you said earlier today…”

“Yeah, I wasn’t fucking with you.”

Tony sighed, closing his eyes and tilting his head back against the shelf. “I can’t help but notice you didn’t ask my question about whether or not I’d be dying today.”

“You won’t,” Chan assured him, not that Tony was very assured by his reassurance. He was assuredly not assured. “Unless you die of starvation because you won’t go out there and put her back.”

“Why do  _ I  _ have to go out there? After it bit your hand to pieces?”

Chan looked down at his hand. “Actually, it wasn’t so much a bite as it was a stab with her stylet and then she kind of…  _ dragged  _ me for a little ways.”

“How the  _ fuck  _ does that make it better?”

“Uh… yeah, I don’t know,” Chan replied, and despite Tony’s fear, frustration, and crippling anxiety, he had to laugh. 

“Holy shit. You’re insane. You’re like Sigourney Weaver in the fourth Alien movie. You’re like the gay British android in the second Alien prequel.” 

Chan blinked at him. “I’m not British. Or an android. And I’ve never seen Alien.”

“You’ve  _ never  _ seen Alien?” Tony asked, and he’d meant to ask  _ you’re gay?  _ but that apparently didn’t get through his filter (and here Tony had been thinking he didn’t even have a filter). “Well, that’s it. We’re getting out of here, and I’m making you watch every single Alien movie.”

“It’s a date,” Chan agreed, and then froze for a second, seeming to realize what he’d said. “I mean-“

“Nope, too late, you said it was a date, no taking it back now. Even though I will literally  _ never  _ forgive you for telling me to go back out there and deal with a giant Tardigrade that tried to eat your hand,” Tony said, holding up his hand to prevent Chan from speaking. 

Chan closed his mouth, then opened it again, then closed it. Until he finally spoke, seeming to have run everything through his head and come up with an answer. “But she wouldn’t try to eat  _ you.  _ Tardigrades—they eat their parents sometimes. And their siblings. You aren’t familiar to her, she’s probably scared of you. Besides,” Chan broke off for a second, readjusting his hand to stop the bleeding, “Tanner is really very nice when she isn’t… you know, trying to eat me. You can coax her back in the enclosure with the mycelium, then lock her in, we’ll be on our merry way, and you can drive me to the hospital.”

“Great plan,” Tony said, “except one problem. There is literally no way in hell I’m going out there.” He leaned over, grabbing his phone and frowning at the large cracks now in its screen as he unlocked it. 

“What are you doing?” Chan asked.

“Calling someone, what you should’ve done as soon as that thing got out.”

Almost immediately, Chan snatched the phone out of Tony’s hand and threw it across the closet, where it hit the wall and snapped into pieces. “They’ll  _ kill _ her!” 

“And she’ll kill  _ us!”  _ Tony argued, fighting to get Chan away from him as he scrambled over to his phone, even though from the look of it, there was no way it’d work anymore. 

“Not if we—“

They were both cut off by a sudden banging noise, like someone had swung the lab door open so aggressively it hit the wall and bounced back. “What the  _ hell _ is going on in here, Chan? I can hear this racket from two floors up!”

Chan, who was still mostly on top of Tony in a method of preventing him from getting up to grab the pieces of his phone, looked down at him, a prickle of worry in his eyes. 

“Naird,” Tony muttered, pushing on Chan’s shoulder. “Let me up.”

Chan did, and Tony sat up, rubbing his neck where it had smacked into the corner of a shelf, looking towards the door with apprehension. 

Neither of them made a sound, barely even breathing as they listened. 

“Chan!” Naird’s voice echoed throughout the lab, and Tony sat up, scooting towards the door.

“We really should-“

Chan grabbed his shoulder, pulling him back and interrupting him with a loud,  _ “No!” _

There was silence for another second, and then two hushed words uttered by Naird that barely made it to Tony’s ears. “What the…”

Then there was a scream. A loud, agonizing scream like someone was getting torn apart right outside the door, followed by a thumping sound, someone falling, and a loud, animalistic snarl. For several minutes, Chan and Tony sat in that storage closet in absolute silence, listening to the sounds of tearing flesh and claws tapping against the tile floor in vague shock. 

Finally, Tony broke the silence. “Won’t eat me, huh?” He asked, glancing at Chan. 

“I… may have been wrong about that.”

_ “May  _ have?”

“Sorry,” Chan said, glancing at him with what Tony hoped was a look of sincerity. 

Tony rolled his eyes, looking away. The sounds of the Tardigrade eating were slowly getting less aggressive, like it was getting full. Or maybe it had just eaten everything it wanted to. The sounds of its claws clicking against the floor sounded again, getting softer and softer, like it was walking away. The noise continued growing quieter until it vanished altogether. 

“Do you think he…” Chan began.

“I doubt it.” Naird was notorious for leaving doors open. And the stairwell, while it was a three-story walk to the ground floor, was right next to the lab. The back door the stairs led to was rarely, if ever, locked. And it led right outside. 

“Should we…” Chan began again, before trailing off, nodding towards the door. Tony swallowed nervously.

“Now’s as good a time as any.” He stood up, brushing off his clothes, and gripped the door handle. He stared down at it, twisting it once, then letting it click back to the closed position. He did it again.

“What are you doing? Do you want me to do it?”

Tony waved him away, completing the ritual three more times. It soothed him. Like a good luck charm. Like if he didn’t do something five times they’d both be doomed. Then he opened the door, letting it swing open. The power was back on, and Tony really wished it wasn’t because if it hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have been greeted by the sight of what used to be Naird and was now mostly blood and torn bits of clothes. 

“Holy shit,” Chan muttered from behind him.

“I think maybe Tanner could be a cute name for a cat,” Tony said hollowly, to which Chan nodded vehemently in response.

“Look.” He pointed towards the door, where bloody marks made a trail down the hall and into the stairwell. The tardigrade had most definitely escaped. He frowned. “I’m actually kinda sorry now I didn’t get to see her. Bet she was cute.”

“I have pictures,” Chan responded. 

“Oh. Sweet.” 

“Yeah.”

“So,” Tony said, staring at what remained of Naird’s body. “Alien? I’ve got it on Blu-ray at my place.”

“Uh…” Chan shrugged, carefully stepping over the largest pool of blood. “Sure.”

**Author's Note:**

> and then they went to tony's place and watched Alien (1979) starring Sigourney Weaver and made out on the living room couch. Chan's hand was miraculously healed by the power of gay (aka i forgot abt it and by the time i remembered i'd already written the ending and thought it was too funny to change). thank you for your time and goodnight.


End file.
